


Wednesday Broken Ankle

by eigengrau



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Also some angst may have snuck in, Clint is irritating, Fluff, Humor, M/M, Phil "I'm Too Old For This Shit" Coulson, Sushi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-11
Updated: 2012-03-11
Packaged: 2017-11-01 19:37:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/360471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eigengrau/pseuds/eigengrau
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil frowned at the phone on his desk, his neck craned at an uncomfortable angle to keep the handset pressed to his ear. “I’m not bringing you sushi, Clint.”</p><p>A day in the life of Phil Coulson.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wednesday Broken Ankle

“Is it your lunch break yet? I need you to bring me sushi.”

 

Phil frowned at the phone on his desk, his neck craned at an uncomfortable angle to keep the handset pressed to his ear. “I’m not bringing you sushi, Clint.”

 

The archer groaned down the line. “I’m hungry!”

 

“So get one of Tony’s robots to make you a sandwich. I’m busy.” Phil scribbled his signature on a field report from the previous week, making a point to the empty room.

 

“Phil. I’m an invalid. Show some pity.”

 

“This is the third call this morning.”

 

“It’s not my fault the instructions to the DVR are in Cantonese. And technically it’s the afternoon.”

 

Phil glanced at his watch. It was twelve oh two.

 

“Come on, have a heart.” Clint was whining. “Please come over. Please? Honey? Baby? Sweetie pie?”

 

“If you ever call me any of those names ever again, Barton, I’ll break your other ankle.” Phil pinched the bridge of his nose and glared at a junior agent who had been staring through the window of his office. The young man turned white and sprinted in the opposite direction.

 

“So does this mean you’ll come over?”

 

Phil grabbed his coat off the back of his ergonomic desk chair. “You’re a menace to society.”

 

Clint laughed. “Then aren’t you glad I’m stuck up here instead of hanging around headquarters annoying people?”

 

“You’re still being annoying, you’re just doing it long-distance.”

 

“Well need California rolls. And maybe those ones with the little orange fish eggs on top. And possibly some spring rolls, too. And don’t go to that place on Houston, the chef doesn’t watch his hands.”

 

Coulson hung up, dropping the phone decisively back onto its cradle. He eyed the stack of paperwork on his desk mournfully and shrugged the dark jacket over his shoulders with a sigh.

 

-

 

The Whole Foods on Union Square was surprisingly full for twelve thirty on a Wednesday afternoon. Mothers pushed their toddlers around in shopping carts, batting their tiny hands away gently when they reached for the brightest boxes on the shelves. A couple of college students were loitering around the salad bar, sneaking olives when they thought no one was looking. Phil grabbed the pre-packaged sushi, piling a few boxes on top of each other to account for Clint’s appetite. The line stretched back through the aisles and he ended up sandwiched between a harried looking middle-aged woman and a painfully hip guy juggling three six-packs of PBR.

 

Phil twitched as his cell phone vibrated. He fished one-handed in the pocket of his jacket, ignoring the dirty looks of the other people in line.

 

He pressed the phone to his ear. “Coulson.”

 

“What’s taking so long?”

 

Phil resisted the urge to punch a display of canned beans. “I’m shopping. For you. In case you forgot, you wanted sushi.”

 

“It’s been half an hour. Where are you?”

 

“In the check-out line. Anyway, isn’t patience supposed to be your thing? I’m pretty sure that’s what we hired you for.”

 

Clint snorted. It crackled over the phone. “Yeah, that’s all fine and dandy when I’m trying to shoot stuff. But there’s nothing to _do_ here. I’m bored outta my skull.”

 

“Watch TV or something.” Phil caught his phone between his ear and his shoulder and reached up with his newly free hand to grab a packet of gourmet coffee off the shelf as he passed by. If he was going to deal with Clint in a mood like _this_ , he at least deserved some free-trade Chilean java.

 

“There’s nothing on.”

 

“I TIVO’ed My Strange Addiction yesterday.”

 

“I repeat: There’s nothing on.”

 

Phil sighed. “Amuse yourself. I’ll be over soon, okay?”

 

“Yeah, okay.” Clint paused for a second, and Phil thought he was going to hang up. “Do you really need all these episodes of Supernanny?”

 

“Delete them and I’ll have your security clearance revoked.” Phil shifted the coffee to rest on top of the sushi boxes. “I’m hanging up.”

 

-

 

Phil spent twenty minutes on a subway platform waiting for the inexplicably delayed A train. One woman on her cell phone said there was something on the tracks. A guy in a sketchy-looking raincoat muttered to himself about a government conspiracy. Phil overheard someone say that a friend of theirs thought that the Hulk was involved. He winced, praying that Banner was safe and quiet in his SHIELD lab with the reinforced adamantium walls. The paperwork for incidents involving Bruce was a nightmare nearly as bad as anything Tony Stark could produce.

 

Nearly.

 

So he was stuck waiting with a Whole Foods bag full of California rolls and vegetable dumplings (Because he needs to eat too, damn it). It was sweltering underground- the subway was always either too hot or just this side of freezing- and Phil ended up taking his coat off somewhere around Midtown. The only free seat had some sort of suspicious blue substance on it, so he had to stand for the whole ride.

 

The subway car lurched forward, making Phil stumble as he reached for his suddenly buzzing phone. Clint’s name flashed on the caller ID and Phil answered with a roll of his eyes.

 

“What now?”

 

“What are you wearing?”

 

“When I said to amuse yourself, this wasn’t what I had in mind.” Phil watched the raincoat man out of the corner of his eye, wary of the suspicious looks that the man kept shooting him.

 

“Seriously, though,” Clint asked eagerly. “C’mon, indulge me.”

 

“I’m already indulging you. Why do you think I’m bringing you lunch when I could be back at the office?”

 

“True love? Anyway, what color are your boxers?”

 

“Clint.” Phil pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to ward off the inevitable headache building behind his eyes. “I’m not having phone sex with you in the middle of the subway.”

 

-

 

The Avenger’s mansion stuck out even in the clamor of Manhattan, all sleek angles and smooth metal. Phil suspected that Tony Stark had more of an influence on the building’s creation than simply financing it; the odds that Tony hadn’t butted into the design process at least once were slim. As Phil pushed in the revolving doors, he prayed that he wouldn’t run into Stark.

 

The security guard in the lobby nodded to him as he flashed his clearance. It was only a formality at this point; Phil spent far more time than he wanted to admit in the apartments near the top floors. He rode the elevator up until the red digits blinked thirty-five, checking to make sure the sushi had survived in transit before stepping out into the hallway.

 

“In here!”

 

Phil headed into the den. Clint was sprawled out over the couch, his right foot propped up on a pillow. The white cast was scribbled on in different colored pens, messages in Natasha’s flowing Cyrillic script, an awkward “Get well soon” in Bruce’s cramped letters, Steve’s carefully drawn smiley face and assorted dirty jokes in Tony’s unintelligible handwriting. Clint looked up from the book on his lap and waved, smiling broadly. “Hey. About time.”

 

“Don’t push your luck.” Phil dropped to the sofa, handing Clint his sushi. “You owe me for that.”

 

“I can make it up to you.” Clint waggled his eyebrows suggestively. Phil frowned. “Not that I regularly pay for favors with sex, obviously, but I think in this case we’d both benefit.” He cracked open the box of sushi, grabbing a California roll and popping it into his mouth.

 

“Maybe once you’re back on your feet.” Phil took the box as Clint passed it over.

 

“Yeah, but the whole point of the exercise would be for me to stay _off_ my feet.”

 

Phil’s frown deepened. He picked the TV remote up from the coffee table, flipping through the channels before finally landing on a repeat of Cupcake Wars on the Food Channel. Gulping down his sushi, Clint nudged him with his elbow.

 

“Hey. Are you angry?”

 

“No.”

 

“Did I overestimate how endearing I was? I mean, I know you’ve got work, Phil, I wasn’t trying to cause problems or anything.”

 

“I know.”

 

Clint shifted so that he could face Phil and still keep his foot on the pillow. “You don’t have to stay here. You can go back to headquarters if you need to.”

 

Phil fixed him with an exasperated look. “Clint. Shut up.”

 

“That’s easier said than done.”

 

“If I really needed to be back at SHIELD I’d be there right now.” He stole another California roll. “Trust me, if I thought a few of Bruce’s progress reports on enzyme growth wouldn’t keep for another day, I’d be down there filing them. But I’m not, so stop fidgeting and eat your damn sushi.”

 

To his credit, Clint waited until Phil had finished chewing and swallowing to lean over and kiss him.  Phil made a small noise of protest and pushed him back gently, hands on the archer’s broad shoulders.

 

“You’re going to hurt your ankle like that.” He scolded, throwing a leg over Clint’s waist, straddling him and at the same time moving his foot out of harm’s way. Clint tugged on the older man’s necktie- dark forest green, with silver pinstripes- and moaned as he licked his way into Phil’s mouth.

 

“Wait,” he said a few minutes later, in between kisses. “Is that why you’re pissed at me? Because of my ankle?”

 

“How do you figure that I’m pissed?” Phil bit his collarbone, earning a groan and a half-aborted jerk of Clint’s hips. “I bought you food and I’m about to stick my hand down your sweatpants. Most people would say I look pretty content right now.”

 

“Yeah, but you were giving me The Look earlier.” Clint’s fingers tangled in Phil’s thinning hair, cupping the back of his head. “I know that look. That’s the look you only get when I’ve broken something expensive, like that time with the flower pot.”

 

“It was a Ming vase, Clint, and I don’t think the Chinese ambassador is ever going to have dinner with Director Fury again after that, so I was perfectly justified in any dirty looks I may have sent your way.”

 

“Yeah, but,” Clint frowned. “You’re angry at me now.”

 

Phil clambered out of Clint’s lap, an admission in itself. “There’s a difference between angry and upset.”

 

“You don’t do upset. You barely do emotions sometimes, Phil, not ones that I can see. Give me something to work with.”

 

Phil was starting to remember why he hadn’t been in a solid relationship since his mid-thirties. He was good at getting things down on paper, organized and in files and memos. Margin notes scribbled in gel pen were not his style.

 

Clint made a lot of margin notes. And he sang too loudly in the shower, and couldn’t maintain radio silence, and he liked to talk after sex when most people just clung like post-coital koalas and fell asleep. Phil wondered if he could get away with treating conversations like this the way he did a debriefing. Stark was sure to have a laptop lying around somewhere, and Phil had managed to figure out all his passwords so far- he could open up Excel and make a spreadsheet. The furrow between Clint’s brows was getting deeper by the second. He decided against it.

 

“You jumped out of a fourth story window.”

 

Clint shrugged. “To my credit, I thought Tony would catch me.”

 

“But he didn’t. And you didn’t tell anyone what you were planning, you didn’t give any warning. Even if Stark hadn’t had his hands full with that giant lizard, he wouldn’t have known you were in trouble. You have a comm. for a reason, your teammates aren’t psychic.”

 

“Maybe we should start working with the X-Men. I hear their redhead’s a telepath, and it’d give Natasha someone to play with-“

 

“Clint _. Stop_.” Phil’s voice was quietly furious. “It was irresponsible. This-“ He pointed to the cast, stiff and dirty-white around Clint’s foot, “-was irresponsible. It could have been your neck that you broke. I know how you are with this kind of thing, I know that you’re not going to stop with the sort of stupid, dangerous risks that you always take, but no, it doesn’t exactly make me happy to see you get hurt. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

 

On the television, the studio audience cheered. Clint reached for the remote and muted it. He was silent for a long moment. The sushi sat on the coffee table, forgotten.

 

“I think you should ask Fury to be assigned to 24-hour detail. For the team, I mean.” He said abruptly. Phil raised a weary eyebrow at him.

 

“I already spend every waking hour of my day babysitting. Why would I want to add in the precious few hours of sleep I get, too?”

 

“Well,” Clint counted on his fingers, “There’s a room on the thirty-second floor that everyone agrees would make a great office, and the coffee is always the fancy organic kind, and there’s a laundry room so you wouldn’t have to go to that scary Laundromat on Astor Place every time you wanted to get your suits dry cleaned. Also the walls are thicker than the ones in your apartment.”

 

Phil turned away from the silent TV slowly, staring at Clint. “Is this your way of asking me to move in with you?”

 

Clint thought about it for a second. “Yeah. Kind of.” He nodded. “Yes.”

 

Phil kept staring.

 

“I mean, my roommates can be kind of hard to deal with,” he continued, “But I think you can handle them.”

 

It took Phil a moment to gather his thoughts, which didn’t happen often. “Is this an apology? Because you don’t have to, Clint, I was just saying how I felt. It isn’t something you need to make up for.”

 

“It’s not an apology. Well, okay, maybe a little bit, but to be honest…” Clint ran a hand through his hair. “I may have been thinking about it for a while.”

 

Phil hummed, thinking. “I’m going to need to transfer my weapons cache to your safe.”

 

“Okay.”

 

“And I’ll need somewhere to put my suits.”

 

“I have a big closet.”

 

Phil wrapped an arm around Clint’s shoulders, scooting closer with a sigh. “I’m not so sure I’m thrilled at the prospect of living in the same house as Tony Stark.”

 

“Think of it this way: If he gets on your nerves, you can drug his protein shakes.” Phil chuckled as Clint pressed a kiss to his collarbone. “Thanks again for the sushi.”

 

“I also got dumplings.”

 

“You know me too well.”

 

The TV Flickered. Downstairs, something crashed and Thor’s muffled laughter leaked through, mingled with Tony’s cackling. Clint breathed in the smell of Phil’s shirt, crisp laundry detergent over the arm musk of skin and stringent hints of brand-name soap. “Hey, Phil?”

 

“Mm hm?”

 

“Thanks for caring, man.”

 

Phil closed his eyes.

 

It could work.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the prompts, "Taking Care of a Sick/Injured Partner", "Grocery Shopping Together", "Moving in Together", "Talking on the Phone for Hours While Separated", and "Helping the Other with an Annoying Task for No Reason" on the ccbingo community on LiveJournal.


End file.
